1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to sunshade awnings, specifically to such awnings which are portable and are used in conjunction with a fence or other means of support to produce shade.
2. Description of Related Art
There are many situations where shade is desirable for both baseball and softball participants and spectators to prevent heat exhaustion and dehydration. Some ball field dugouts are permanently covered, but the vast majority are not.
Inventors have designed many types of permanent and portable awnings to attach to buildings, recreational vehicles, vans and cars. Disadvantages of such awnings is that they are specifically designed to be attached to a vehicle or building, are cumbersome to assemble and difficult to carry by a single person.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,280,687 to Boiteau (1994), U.S. Pat. No. 4,733,683 to Pozzi (1985) and U.S. Pat. No. 4,719,954 to Curtis, Juracek and Scherer (1986) are typical of the type of awnings designed to be permanently attached to recreational vehicles. These types of awnings have the obvious disadvantage of permanent type attachments to sides of vehicles. Furthermore, if detached, they would be exceedingly bulky and difficult to carry.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,906,969 to Myers (1975), U.S. Pat. No. 5,381,814 to Brandon (1995) and U.S. Pat. No. 5,558,145 to Baka (1996) all indicate retractable awnings to be temporarily mounted to luggage racks or roof surfaces of vehicles. Although these awnings are somewhat portable, these too would be difficult to carry by hand and attach to a ball field fence. U.S. Pat. No. 5,400,813 to Swan (1995) indicates a simplified awning attached at one end to the vehicle and supported by poles and guying lines at the other end. While this type of awning could be carried to a ball field, the time required to unpack and assemble and then to repack after a game is a deterrence to its use. In addition, one of the pieces to this assembly could be lost rendering it useless.
Other sunshade devises such as canopies and umbrellas have been used to produce shade at beaches, campsites, etc. These sunshade devises are also not suitable for shade at ball field dugouts due to their cumbersome nature to transport, set up and take down. Although umbrellas are easy to use and transport, they afford little shade and are difficult to fix to the ground during winds.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,437,298 to Lin (1995) shows a sunshade arrangement consisting of a material stretched between a roller and header bars supported by four legs. While this arrangement is shown to be portable, it includes four legs where only two are needed if the canopy is partially supported by the fence. In addition, the poles are intended to be pushed into the ground and would be ineffective if the ground directly below the poles were concrete or asphalt.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,068,673 to Bernardi (1978) depicts a canister awning supported by a single leg. The awning material is supported by two telescoping arms from the single leg. An awning of this type which relies on the single leg to be fixed into the ground is not usable when the ground is hard or impenetrable below the single leg and is prone to instability during winds.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,174,073 to Sabo (1992) indicates a portable shielding system consisting of a retractable screening material in a housing. This invention, designed to screen objects and equipment in the field, requires the housing to be supported by the ground or the object to be screened. Detachable legs (or spacers) are specified only to support the screening material away from the housing and the equipment. If the legs were used to support the housing, the structure would be unstable. In addition, rings are specified at the free end of the screening material for fastening to the ground with stakes and could not directly attach to a fence. Thus this shielding system would be unsuitable to cover a ball field dugout.